


let's fall in love for the night and forget in the morning

by fantasize



Category: Never Have I Ever (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Mutual Pining, Soft cuddling, foreshadowing to malibu kiss, idk its benvi they're cute, light banter, night conversations, they get real with each other, they're painfully avoiding their feelings for one another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24776527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantasize/pseuds/fantasize
Summary: Devi struggles to fall back asleep after having a dream about her Dad. It doesn't help that it's her first night at Ben's house, and she feels everything around her is unfamiliar; but then Ben walks in, and she realizes that in a world where she knows nothing, he's the one thing that she's familiar with.in other words, ben talks to and comforts devi after she wakes up in the middle of the night and can't sleep.(title from the song 'let's fall in love for the night' by finneas)
Relationships: Ben Gross & Devi Vishwakumar, Ben Gross/Devi Vishwakumar
Comments: 22
Kudos: 125





	let's fall in love for the night and forget in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first ben and devi fic... honestly these two have been on my mind quite a lot recently. they're one of my emotional support het couples so... yeah. i wrote this comfort one-shot while being stressed for my finals so excuse any grammatical errors you see cause i only edited this, like, once.
> 
> idk if ill write anymore things for these two, but i honestly might who knows. i love my cute enemies to lovers. although i feel like nhie is one of the few shows where they made a really solid love triangle and both the guys are likable. i hope this show gets s2 and we get to see devi's character mature (and make better decisions). i'm also curious to see what they're gonna do with ben and devi. also im so glad us western desis are getting that rep (and that so many other ethnicities are getting representation too, this cast is fr diverse)! so yeahhh okay enjoy <3

_Stop arguing, kanna!_

_Please, both of you, stop it!_

Devi wakes up in a cold sweat, bile piling up in the back of her throat. Everything feels so hoarse, like she had been screaming for hours on end. She grips the bed sheets hard, harder, and then even harder, trying to suppress the urge to yell. The room she’s in isn’t helping; everything is unfamiliar, and what she needs is something comforting, something warm, something she’s familiar with-

“Devi?” 

A head peeks out from behind the bedroom door, blue eyes piercing through their dark surroundings. He steps in, closing the door behind him. His hair is messy, and his eyes are half lidded. It’s obvious she woke him up. 

_Dammit_ _._ She never thought she’d be this vulnerable in front of Ben Gross.

Devi wonders whether she should tell him everything, or nothing at all. After all, she’s so unpredictable that it would be feasible enough if she tells him she woke up crying from a nightmare about something as little as failing a test. (Although, to be fair, she assumes Ben would do the same over a mark below the 70’s, but that was a conversation for another day)

“I heard you scream. Are you okay?”

_Oh god._ Devi heard those three words from his mouth far too many times in the past week. Now that she thinks about it, he was always secretly taking care of her, always finding ways to ask her if she was okay. She hates to admit it, but he always noticed even when no one else did. On the day when she said she wished the Nazis would kill him (she’d really like to forget that), he said he noticed something was bothering her. He’d paid attention to her far more than she’d like to dwell on; because he’s Ben Gross. The same Ben Gross who swore to take her down ever since first grade. Why would he out of all people care this much? There was no way he actually did.

But here she was, sitting in _his_ spare guest room, sleeping in _his_ house, eating food made by _his_ butler- sorry, house manager. He’d let her move in! Ben Gross had let Devi Vishwakumar move in! She didn’t know why the ridiculousness of this situation took so long to hit her.

“Uh, yeah. You should go back to sleep.” She whispers, pulling the blanket closer to her body. The scent of the duvet makes her feel even more uneasy; it’s an unknown smell of lavender (she’s mad it doesn’t smell like Ben, because at least that smell would be familiar), and not the scent of home. “Are you sure?” He asks, with a deeper voice than usual. Devi really likes his night voice, but she’d never admit it. 

“Yeah.” She affirms, although she wasn’t exactly sure. She closes her eyes, waiting to hear the sound of the door close, but her mind wavers off to her nightmare, the same memory of her father trying to reason with her Mom, of him clutching his chest, of him screaming in pain and her not being able to do anything, of him-

“Ben!” The name leaves her lips in the form of a desperate cry.

She scrambles to sit up, eyes wide open. She doesn’t want to close her eyes. She can’t think of anything _else,_ and it doesn’t help that everything around her is painfully unfamiliar, and that what she needed was something… well… _familiar._

The boy in question comes running back, flinging the door open. He switches on the lights as he concernedly says, “Yeah?? You okay??”

Devi feels her anxiety slowly slink away, as she makes eye contact with him. _Oh_ . Ben is _familiar._ Ben is what she needs. In this house full of beds and blankets and posters that she isn’t familiar with, he’s the only thing that she knows. He is the only thing that she’s used to. Ben Gross is her constant. He’s _familiar._

“I can’t sleep,” She admits, nervously fiddling with her thumbs. “Will you stay with me?”

Ben’s jaw tightens, and he raises his eyebrows. Devi cringes beforehand, awaiting rejection and maybe a jab at her vulnerability, but to her surprise, he hums a _yes._

“Yes,” He repeats louder, more clearly this time. “I’ll stay with you.”

“For… for real?” 

Ben nears the large bed, shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah. Isn’t that what you want?” He says, while taking a seat on the bouncy mattress. The mattress is so big that Ben is still pretty far from Devi, even when both of them are on the same bed. “So? What do you want me to do? You want me to talk to you until you fall asleep?” 

Observing Devi’s silence, he decides to change the tone of the conversation. “Or do you want me here so that my handsomeness can calm you down?” At this, Devi scoffs, a smile slightly playing on her lips. “Ben, if anything, I’ll fall _asleep_ looking at your subpar face. I’ve seen people with a face like yours, like, thirty times this past week. You’re nothing special.” She retorts, but without any malicious intent. 

He rolls his eyes, crossing his arms. “Really? You know, I once heard that if you think you see someone’s face in everyone around you, that means you’re thinking about them often.” He mentions with a smirk on his face. Devi wants to slap that smug expression off his face. 

“You have anything you wanna tell me, David?” 

“No! Gross, come on. That’s gross.”

“Think of another adjective! You can’t use my last name AND the adjective version in the same sentence.” 

“Why not? You can’t even pronounce my name properly.”

Ben sighs, acknowledging his loss. “Okay, but, in my defense, you pronounce it the whitewashed way too…” Devi chuckles. He’s right, but she only does it so that people won’t fuss over how to say her name the right way. She doesn’t even understand why it’s such a huge problem! Her name is only four letters. 

“How do you say your name, David?”

She glances at his expression, expecting something snarky. But he looks… serious. He’s staring at her with those colorful eyes (goddamn, they really shine when he’s wearing blue). Taken aback by the genuineness of his question, her mouth slightly falls open. “Uh, well, it’s Dhe-Vee.” 

“Dhe… Dhe… Why can’t I say the first part properly??” He grumbles, running a hand through his hair. She has to suppress a laugh at how angry he sounds with himself. He is a known perfectionist, so if he couldn’t do one thing right, it would be an easy opportunity for Devi to take a jab at him. 

For some weird reason though, she doesn’t feel like humiliating him tonight. 

“Dhe. The D and H sound is hard for westerners to pronounce. Oh! Think of it as the word ‘they’. They-vi.” 

“They-vi… Devi!” He exclaims, looking at her for some sort of confirmation that he said it right. She smiles softly, nodding. “That’s it!”

“I still like David better, though. It has history,” Ben says, looking at her fondly. “You know what I mean?”

Devi groans, immediately knowing what he’s talking about. In first grade, their math teacher had called her David instead of Devi, and Ben couldn’t stop teasing her about it, constantly calling her David. The whole class joined too, throwing away her real name for the stupid white boy version.

A year later, everyone else had gone back to just Devi, but with Ben, the name David stuck. Although Devi likes the nickname much more than ‘UN’, which had followed her like a curse for the past years of her school life. 

“I like it better than UN though,” Devi says, and she notices how his grin falls. “Y’know, having the whole school call you and your friends ‘unfuckable nerds’ isn’t great and all.”

“I’m really sorry about that. To be honest, I never meant it…” He avoids eye contact, his gaze falling on the bed sheet. “Ben, you don’t have to lie to make me feel better. It’s cool. I get it. No one wants to fuck me. And definitely not Paxton.” Speaking the words out and letting them hang in the air is terrifying for Devi, and it hurts more saying it out loud than letting it run in her mind like a broken record.

“God, no. Devi…” 

She leans back on her pillow that’s resting upright on the headboard, letting her eyes rest on Ben’s ~~cute~~ stupid Rick and Morty themed PJ’s. “You know that’s not true.” He says, as she studies the way his chest heaves with the sentence.

“Uh… no? No one wants to get down and dirty with me. The most they’ll do is kiss me and then _adios!_ It’s like they never knew me.” She says, closing her eyes to think about Paxton’s cold behavior. She’s done nothing wrong. She threw it all away for him. Her friends, her family. Yet now he’s acting like she’d said something terrible to him. 

“This isn’t about the two times I tried to kiss you right?” 

_Huh?_ Devi opens her eyes, staring directly at Ben. _He doesn’t know about Paxton,_ she realizes. “Oh, no. Wait, why _did_ you do that?”

Blood rushes up to his cheeks, and he immediately looks away, clearing his throat. “I told you I was drunk on Trent’s ball punch!” He exclaims a little too defensively, stammering a little. Devi feels her lips tug up a little, into a tiny shit-eating grin. “Chill out, Ben. I know you have a girlfriend.”

His face crinkles in disgust at the word _girlfriend._ “Actually, I think I’m gonna break up with her soon. She only likes me for my money. She never talks to me. And,” His gaze lands on her face. “I think I don’t enjoy spending time with her as much as I should.”

Silence. 

Devi tries to ignore the pool of warmth erupting from her stomach. She likes the way he’s staring at her right now, and she’s secretly happy he’s breaking up with Shira (although that’s totally unrelated to her liking the way he’s looking at her, she’s just glad he wasn’t going to be in that miserable excuse of a _relationship_ anymore… or at least she convinces herself of that).

“Damn. That sucks,” She mutters, although it really doesn’t. “You’re breaking up with someone before you can even grow a beard. Yet here I am, single as fuck, in no relationship to begin with.” 

Ben snorts. “But you have the beard, so you technically won.” Devi pulls her legs out of the blanket to kick Ben’s arm. “Shut up.”

He smiles widely, and her heart flutters. She has to admit that when she was younger, she found his smile very attractive. Even if he was ecstatic over getting a higher mark than her, the way his eyes would crinkle up and his dimples would show and his shining teeth would bask in its glory would make her feel less sad about losing to him. That feeling would only last for a split second though, until she would get angry at him for beating her. 

Okay, maybe she _still_ finds his smile attractive.

Suddenly, she remembers why she had woken up in the first place. Her nightmare. She’s confused at how fast she managed to forget, but then realized it was thanks to Ben. He’d diverted her thoughts just by arguing with her.

“I had a dream about my dad.”

_Oh,_ Ben mouths, but Devi isn’t fooled. She knows he was aware the entire time.

“It’s dumb, I know. But… this argument we had on that… that day… I keep on dreaming about it.” 

“It’s not dumb,” Ben reassures, shifting closer to Devi. “How does it make you feel?”

She bites back a remark about whether he’s her therapist, and instead decides to answer truthfully. “Scared,” She whispers. “And sad. And guilty. There are so many things I wished I said that night to him. I wish I didn’t argue with my Mom and stress him out even more.”

Ben nods, showing her that he’s listening. “I just, I only wish to see him again. Nothing else.” She admits, voice starting to quiver, and Ben notices (like always), so he moves to sit beside her and throws an arm over her shoulders. He rubs her arm comfortingly, and Devi smiles at the gesture. (Usually she would have pulled away, but there’s something about the way he’s rubbing her arm that makes her feel better)

“All you have to know is that he’s probably watching you right now. And I’m sure he’s up in heaven, making colorful commentary about the decisions you’re making right now. Although, I don’t know if that would make you feel better, feeling like your Dad is watching you do all these ballsy things, like almost having sex with Paxton Hall Yoshida-”

“Ben!” She yells, punching him lightly in the stomach. “You’re rambling… it’s okay, I got what you meant. You could have stopped after your first sentence, Gross.” 

He smiles, turning a little red. “Yeah, I’m sorry. But, the point is, a part of your Dad will always be there with you. And you’re not weak for admitting that you miss him, y’know? You don’t have to push away these feelings.”

Devi stiffens, pulling her knees close to her chest. Ben removes his arm from where it was wrapped around her, letting it awkwardly hang beside him. “I’m not pushing them away,” She mutters, looking down. “And me being paralyzed doesn’t mean I was sad.”

Ben takes a deep breath. “See, you’re doing it again. You’re finding some way to avoid it. Your paralyzation doesn’t make you weak, but it does mean his death affected you. Being sad over your father dying doesn’t make you weak, Devi.” His voice gets caught in his throat, as he seems to dwell over a memory. “I’m sorry I was such a dick to you when you were in a wheelchair. I should’ve at least been nicer to you…”

“What? No!” Devi exclaims, catching Ben off guard. “Ben, you don’t understand how grateful I am to you for that. I mean, yeah, sometimes it miffed me when you would use the ‘psychosomatic’ jab, but during that time everyone in my life was treating me differently. They were pitying me, and because they were acting so different, I felt like I couldn’t forget that my Dad had died. So, I’d look forward to class because you’d always be there, trying to one-up me with class participation, trying to get a higher mark than me even if I was stuck in a fucking wheelchair. You were the only thing that hadn’t changed. What I needed was a constant, Ben Gross,” She makes eye contact with him, and her heart flutters again when she feels those big, blue eyes stare right through her. 

“And you were my constant.”

Ben doesn’t say anything, but the way his eyes glint and he softly smiles speaks for itself. A few days ago, Devi couldn’t imagine sitting with Ben Gross on his guestroom’s bed, having a knock-off therapy session with him. She could never imagine feeling this way when he smiles at her, when he says nice words to her, even when he playfully banters with her. But she’s starting to wonder whether these feelings have been piling up for a long time, even before she realized it. 

God, Devi Vishwakumar was a real mess.

A cool breeze sweeps through the room, and she shivers, goosebumps rising. Ben notices, gets off the bed, and pulls the blanket over her body. “The AC must have switched on. It always gets colder here than any other part of the house. I don’t know why though.” He says, and takes a seat again. His legs hang off the side of the bed, his broad back facing her. For a moment, she thinks of tracing patterns along his spine, but she reminds herself of how weird that would be for them. They weren’t dating, nor did they like each other like _that._ Right?

“So, uh… I guess I’ll go now. Goodnight Devi.” He says, about to get up, but Devi grabs his arm, pulling him back down. His blue eyes stare at her brown orbs, and his eyebrows are furrowed in confusion. Devi gulps. “I… Can you sleep with me?”

Ben widens his eyes. “Uh…”

“No! Not in that way, ew! I meant, can you sleep beside me? It’s cold, and I don’t think I can sleep alone tonight. Usually I’d ask Kamala to do this but, you know…”

“She’s not here.” Ben finishes, and she could tell he understands, because that’s just how Ben Gross has always been. He always understands her, sometimes way too well. It’s why he’s so good at pushing her buttons, because he knows by heart which ones to push in the first place. 

He climbs in, and Devi makes room for him underneath the blanket. She snuggles up beside him, and can feel his breath hitch as she rests her head on his shoulder. It takes a few seconds for him to respond, before his arm snakes around her waist and stays there. “This is weird.” Devi says into the burrow of his neck. He smells so… so _good._ (But he always smelled good, even when walking down the halls or when he was answering questions in class)

“It is,” Ben answers, subconsciously rubbing his thumb in soothing circles on her side. “But we can forget about it in the morning.” He whispers, while tilting his head to rest on Devi’s. She doesn’t reply, her eyelids fluttering shut. To be honest, Devi doesn’t want to deal with the fact that she wishes she could spend hours like this, in the warmth of Ben’s hold. She doesn’t want to go back to him holding her at an arm’s length. 

_What about Paxton?_

“Paxton kissed me.” The words slip out of her mouth suddenly, and she wishes she could take them back. Why did she need to say that now? There’s no reason for Ben to know. But it’s the only other thing bothering her, the other thing that was making it hard to sleep. Ben was the first she came clean to about not having sex with Paxton, and he made her feel so comfortable about it. She could relieve her burdens with him. 

She can feel Ben’s jaw tighten, and his thumb halt. “Oh,” He says, with a flattened tone. “Cool.”

“He was my first kiss. But, he’s been ignoring me ever since my Mom screamed at him.”

“Why did she scream at him?”

Devi groaned. “He mentioned that we kissed, and I don’t think he understands how strict Indian moms are. She yelled at him and, ever since, he’s been blowing me off every-time I try to talk to him.”

Ben lets his thumb go back to rubbing circles on her waist, and Devi absentmindedly fiddles with the material of his shirt. “I mean, it’s not like I did anything wrong to him. But, I can’t help but think he’s acting like this cause he’s way out of my league. Like, I would drag his social status down if I dated him.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Ben assures. “But that would be a pretty shitty thing for him to do. I mean, I don’t exactly vibe with Paxton, and definitely don’t agree with his extreme apathy towards school, but… I don’t think he’s an asshole.” 

Devi’s eyes are shut, so she’s unable to read his expression, but she has a feeling Ben is reluctant to say those words, no matter how much he knows they’re true. “Yeah, he’s a nice guy. At least I hope.” She replies, snuggling her head even deeper into the crook of his neck. She can feel his heart start to beat faster under her hand, although she can’t tell if it’s her own pulse.

Here she is, talking about the boy she has an astronomically large crush on, yet having her heart race because of another. Devi can’t seem to understand what they’re doing, but she remembers Ben’s words. _We can forget in the morning._

So, she lets loose, trying to relish in being this close to Ben, because he has that calming effect on her that she craves. In the morning they’ll go back to being friends, (or frenemies), like they were before, so it would be nice to use this opportunity to the fullest. (It just felt nice to be civil with each other though, not to hold each other, and Devi totally didn’t love the way he was holding her right now)

“I thought my first kiss would be more romantic though,” Devi admits, opening her eyes. “I always envisioned kissing while the sun was setting, maybe at Malibu beach.”

Ben lets out a chuckle, and Devi can feel the vibration of his laugh. “Why Malibu?”

“I don’t know. My Dad loved it there. And I guess I do too…” She trails off, tracing the outline of the Rick and Morty design on the front of his blue shirt. “The way the sun sets there is really pretty… It would be meaningful to kiss someone there. I don’t think I’d ever forget it.”

Ben lets his head rest on the headboard, and he can feel his eyes getting a little drowsy. This position is a little _too_ comfortable for the both of them, and they’re starting to get really sleepy. “You know what? I agree. Kissing someone there would be really special. Too bad we both already wasted our first kisses. Hopefully next time we kiss someone, it’ll feel that special.”

Devi hums in accordance, lifting her head slightly to look up at Ben. She’s feeling really drowsy now, almost as if she had a couple shots of tequila and is now staggeringly drunk. She raises her hand up to his face, while smiling slightly. Her fingers lightly trace his pink lips, and she lets them rest there, while looking up at his eyes that remind her of the sky. “You’re pretty,” She says, and then her hand drops onto his lap. Ben pauses, a little shocked at the sudden contact, but then grabs her hand and squeezes it tightly. “You mean handsome?”

“No,” She giggles, and she wonders if she really is drunk. “You’re pretty.”

Ben blushes, intertwining his fingers with hers. “You’re pretty too,” He says all in one breath, almost as if he’s been waiting to get those words off his chest for the longest time. “Pretty beautiful, I mean. I mean, you’re beautiful. And pretty. Not just pretty beautiful, you’re really beauti-”

She laughs softly, eyes crinkling up. “You’re rambling again. I know what you meant.” Ben smiles too, and he’s giving her _that_ smile, the one that she always goes weak over. 

“Thank you.” She says, while burrowing her head into the curve of his neck once again. Her eyes close shut. She doesn’t specify what exactly she’s thankful for; whether it’s for him treating her normally, for him letting her move in, for him silently taking care of her, for him being friends with her, for him sitting here with her, for him listening to her. Devi decides she’s thankful for too many things, so she just lets him figure out what exactly she’s grateful for.

“This feels nice,” Ben says. “Too bad it’s only just for now.”

Devi understands what he means, and feels slightly better that she’s not the only one disappointed. “It would be weird if we were this nice to each other all the time, right?” She asks, not speaking cohesively enough due to her tiredness. 

“Yeah, totally.” He says, pulling her in even closer. “Probably for the best if we stay like how we usually are to each other. I can’t wait to beat you in Mario Kart tomorrow evening.” He jokes, and Devi snorts. “We both know _I’m_ gonna win…” She replies, but she’s unable to finish her sentence. Ben sleepily smiles to himself.

Eventually, they fall asleep in each other’s arms, the warmth lulling them both into a deep slumber. Tonight, Ben feels the least lonely he’s ever been in years, and Devi feels the most calm she’s ever been since the passing of her Dad. 

They know that tomorrow, they would try to pretend that this never happened, that this meant nothing for their relationship. But this night, for the first time in a while, Devi dreams of something that makes her genuinely feel warm on the inside (and not in the Paxton sex dream kind of way, because that one made her uneasy) 

Devi dreams of kissing Ben at Malibu beach, and she has to admit that it’s the most beautiful fake moment of her life. So magnificently beautiful that she hopes one day, it’ll become real. 

**Author's Note:**

> if u made it to the end, good job! sorry if this sucked but if u liked it pls comment or show it some love <3


End file.
